I don’t want to alarm you, but there’s a bug in your kettle. Technically, it’s a worm in the firmware of your Fellow electronic kettle, but it was put there intentionally. What is the brand’s purpose for the worm? Are they trying to steal all your brewing data to sell to the Russians? Are they listening to our conversations around the coffee counter to get ideas for new products?
Their real plan is something far more sinister. Fellow wants to take over all your coffee making gear by getting you their brand new Ode Brew Grinder and all you have to do is beat Wormy. It’s the 2020 Wormy! World Championship Week!
A fun little easter egg hidden on their entire line of electric kettles—the Stagg EKG, Stagg EKG+, and Corvo EKG—Wormy! is a Fellow’s version of the classic phone game Snake that can be accessed by taking the kettle off the base and toggling the F/C switch back and forth until Wormy! appears. Using the temperature control dial, you guide Wormy around the display screen to gobble up 40 Fellow bow tie logos as quickly as possible.“We’re always looking for ways to introduce unexpected and memorable moments into what we design and how we interact with our customers,” Fellow founder Jake Miller tells Sprudge. “Providing a video game sure seemed like a great way to do that. Coffee can sometimes feel so serious and daunting. Wormy is our way of having a bit of fun!”
The person to post the fastest time takes home the grand prize package, including the much-anticipated and recently-released Ode Brew Grinder (only two months after the scheduled Kickstarter campaign rewards date, which in the Jeremy Bearimy of pandemic time is like, early), a Choose Your Controller Sweatshirt, a Wormy! Hat, the real prize, the 2020 Wormy! World Champion Belt. Prizes will also be given for the rest of the top 10 times, but no belt and no grinder.
To submit your score, take a photo of your time on the base’s LCD screen and text it to 29071 (+1-973-547-1071 for international users) with the heading WORMY (in all caps), your score, Instagram handle, and hometown. Submissions are open now through Sunday, October 11th 11:59pm PST, with the winner announcement coming the following day.
If the 2020 Wormy! World Championship isn’t one by a late-stage Millennial, I’ll eat my own head. As the generation that grew up with both the Nokia phone and wanton idleness of youth, no other age group has put in the countless hours of practice at Snake that makes them so uniquely suited to this particular task. Sure, maybe Gen-Z can no-scope you on Call of Duty and say very untoward things to you about it, but can they handle the high-speed hard U-turn needed to be a true Snake/Wormy! master? I think not.
For more information on the 2020 Wormy! World Championship, visit Fellow’s official website.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
